“Sometimes horrors are more penetrating when they are spoken in the softest voice – and so it proves in this potent, distilled miniature by Henry Naylor. The first in a trilogy of plays called Arabian Nightmares, it’s a 70-minute three-hander in which interweaving monologues lead us steadily and gently into hell. The narative draws on the appalling human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, detailing with cool, ghastly precision the process by which ordinary people, corrupted by power, rage, hatred and violence, become capable of acts of unimaginable cruelty. And it forcefully implies that betrayal and atrocity were the shameful motifs of an unlawful war. Michael Cabot’s touring production is stark: three metal stools, three dangling naked lightbulbs. The performances have a piercing focus and the writing is vivid, the trio’s memories haunted by guilt, trauma and the ghosts of those who died in agony and humiliation. Short, sharp and shocking.”
Sam Marlowe – The Times ****